


The Scourger

by tfm



Series: The Scourger [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 07:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19146472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: Beauregard Lionett, spy for the Cobalt Soul, is trying to find proof of the Soltryce Academy's corruption. She didn't count on being hunted down by the Soltryce's most feared assassin, the Scourger.Or, Beau is a spy, and Caleb is the assassin sent to kill her.





	The Scourger

Beauregard Lionett ran.

 

Admittedly, it wasn’t the greatest idea she’d ever had. After all, running drew peoples’ attention, and attention was the last thing you wanted when you were a spy for the Cobalt Soul.

 

More conspicuous, she thought, was the fact that she was drenched in the blood of the contact that had just been murdered in front of her.

 

His name was Mollymauk, and he’d been an ostentatious, purple tiefling, who would have been out of place in Trostenwald, or Kamordah, or Hupperdook, but seemed to fit right into the melting pot that was the great city of Rexxentrum.

 

They’d been sitting, eating kebabs at a joint off the Esplanade, when they’d been set upon by a huge, fuck-off Oni and his pals.

 

Beau had just barely managed to get away, but she didn’t think the Iron Shepherds would buy the story that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her cover was, for all intents and purposes, blown.

 

Dairon would be pissed. The Cobalt Soul would be pissed. They didn’t like it when operations went black; when covers were blown, and operatives were stuck out in the cold. Beau had heard rumors from other operatives that they were inclined to just leave them there, rather than bring them in.

 

Beau rounded the corner, and let her brain catch up with the situation. The Shepherds would be gunning for her now. There was the slightest chance that maybe they’d believe her story that she’d just graduated college, and was backpacking through Wildemount, but it seemed unlikely. Backpackers tended not to chance upon meetings with Empire traitors, after all.

 

The stupid thing was, her contact – Molly the tiefling – would be fine. He was well known in certain circles as “The Phoenix” on account of the fact that he kept on coming back from the dead. Beau wished she had the same sort of reputation. The gash in her stomach from the Lorenzo’s glaive would either be fatal, or not fatal, and there wasn’t much she could do about it, until she found a safe-house. Even still, the wound pulsed, and burned, and Beau suspected that the Oni might have coated the thing with poison.

 

Rexxentrum was one of those cities where there was a huge fucking gulf between the rich and the poor. Slums sat side by side with enormous aristocratic bazaars, and big, fuck-off shopping malls. Beau fucking hated Rexxentrum.

 

Too many magic-users; too many ways for her cover to get blown by a Wizard that just got a little bit too suspicious.

 

Not that she was a suspicious character in general. She looked a lot like so many other visitors to the city; students not long graduated from University, off to see the world with a backpack on their shoulders. It wasn’t an entirely unfair comparison. Beau had studied at the Cobalt Soul, rather than at a University, though, and she wasn’t so much seeing the world as she was collecting intelligence to bring down the Soltryce Academy.

 

Beau ducked into an alleyway, and started pulling on clothes. She had an old Nicodranis U t-shirt that would cover most of the blood, and jeans that would cover the rest of it. The shoes, she swapped out for a beaten up pair of black leather boots. With that, and her hair down, she looked just like any other student on a gap year in the heart of Wildemount, trying to take a look at the Temple of Pelor before it shut for lunch.

 

Just for good measure, she scaled the wall of one of the buildings that made the alley, and ducked through a fire escape. Even if they followed her, they hopefully wouldn’t think that far ahead. None of the Iron Shepherds looked as though they were that intelligent.

 

A soft beeping noise came from the side pocket of her bag. Shit. She’d left her Comms in there again, just like Dairon always told her not to do. It was state of the art Cobalt tech, and she’d already been pickpocketed for one of them in Zadash. Zeenoth hadn’t been particularly impressed when he issued her with a new one.

 

Leaning up against the wall in the hallway of some unfamiliar apartment building, Beau checked the Comms.

 

It was designed to look exactly like any civilian tech, so that if she was captured, or arrested, or hit by a speeding bus, no-one would be any the wiser as to the Cobalt Soul’s activities in Rexxentrum. Any message from Dairon (or more likely, one of Dairon’s dozens of lackeys) would look like nothing more suspicious than a text message from Beau’s mother.

 

Her mother, of course, would never do anything as pedestrian as sending text messages. She found even phone calls distasteful, and Beau managed to get away with about one very awkward call a month, if she was back in Zadash, which, for all intents and purposes, was her home.

 

“Don’t forget to visit your Uncle Bertrand while you’re in the city,” said the message. Attached to it was the location of the safehouse. Beau committed the location to memory (not far from here – probably less than six blocks) and deleted the map. The Comms had a secure delete protocol; anything that was deleted was shredded six ways from Grissen, and was unrecoverable even by the most sophisticated of forensic software.

 

Of course, the map was still in her head, and eventually, even the most hardened operatives cracked under torture.

 

The best way to avoid torture, was to get in and out before they knew you were there. Since that option was no longer available, the only option Beau did have was to get to the Rexxentrum station before they managed to track her down.

 

Though it wasn’t far, Beau took the long way, watching at every corner for anyone that might be following.

 

Station Operatives often got a bad rap, but Beau appreciated their help. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. She appreciated the way she could rock up at two in the morning, bleeding from a gut wound, and have them act like it was nothing special. Nothing that they hadn’t seen a hundred times before.

 

Beau had just about managed to make it there without clutching at the wound; now she was almost certain that the blade had been coated in something. Every step she took was agony, and it was getting harder and harder to think.

 

She knocked once, and lifted her hand to knock again. For some reason, though, the door wasn’t there anymore. Not to mention the world was really, really fuzzy. And why was her face pressing against tile?

 

_Oh._

 

Beau tried to push herself so she was at least looking upwards. After a couple of false starts, she managed it. Standing above her was a tall, blurry figure.

 

She could have sworn it was an angel.

 

…

 

In the darkness, Beauregard dreamed.

 

She dreamed about a lot of things. About growing up a lonely child in a lonely house in Kamordah. Her parents – internationally renowned winemakers – would never let her do anything as dangerous as leaving the house. So she stayed inside, and dodged nannies and tutors, instead learning about the sorts of things that _she_ wanted to learn. History, yes, but history of politics and of wars, rather than kings and queens, and all of that boring stuff.

 

She had briefly considered continuing those studies, and then going into Academia, or whatever it was that people with History degrees did, but then, the Cobalt Soul had come knocking. They had tracked her down through one of a dozen or so aptitude tests she’d done at the Kamordah High School careers fair. The careers fair that she’d been forced to go to, in order to avoid failing out of senior year. Never mind that she was top of the year.

 

Thanks to her habit of truancy, and the school record of number of detentions in a calendar year, she’d been denied the title of valedictorian. It went instead to Tori Cunningham, who, still in her graduation robes, Beau had fucked in the auditorium bathroom after the ceremony. So she’d kind of gotten even in one way or another.

 

Not even a month later, she’d moved to Zadash, and started her training at the most secretive organization outside of the Soltryce Academy itself. The Cobalt Soul, rumor had it, was the Government’s intelligence-gathering organization. They stopped the threats from outside forces and from inside forces. If the Soltryce Academy was the sword, the metaphor went, then the Cobalt Soul was the shield.

 

Of course, than metaphor broke down somewhat when the shield started going after the sword. And, not that anyone would admit it, but the sword was also going after the shield. Three field operatives had died in the last month alone; the reports said it was a lone assassin wielding flames. One operative managed to get a halfway decent look at the guy, before he succumbed to his wounds. They’d had to bring a cleric in to _Speak With Dead_ on him.

 

So now the “run away from immediately” list included the red-haired, bearded man with soulless eyes. The Scourger, the Cobalt called him. It was the greatest fear of any operative to end up on his list.

 

Beau, apparently, hadn’t even made his list. She’d got taken out by the small-time dickhead from the Iron Shepherds.

 

She opened her eyes. That in itself was a bit of a surprise, since she’d made her mind up that she was obviously dead.

 

But no.

 

She was lying on a couch in a safehouse in the middle of Rexxentrum, bloody bandages wrapped around her chest, and a – Beau started. There was a fucking _goblin_ pottering around, making sure her blanket was covering her properly. She blinked.

 

She had heard stories of the Rexxentrum Station Operatives. People made jokes about them; called them Biggs and Smalls. Not that Beau had ever met either of them. She had only heard the stories. This, she supposed, was Smalls.

 

Beau sat up, and regretted it. Her head was swirling, and her skin was clammy, and everything felt fucking awful. She supposed whatever it was that she’d been hit with was still working its way through her system.

 

‘Whoah, lay back down,’ the goblin said, apparently noticing the movement. ‘Yasha’s making lunch, we need to get some food into you.’ Beau felt a little nauseous, but she hadn’t eaten in almost twenty hours – long before she’d met with the tiefling. There was something about running from place to place asking people questions that meant you forgot to eat.

 

‘Where—’ Beau started to speak, and then felt the nausea rise up in her stomach. She moved to roll over, but then felt the sharp pain of the wound in her chest, and gasped in agony. The goblin seemed to know exactly what was happening, and brought a bucket over. The next minute or so was unceremonious, painful, and kinda disgusting.

 

Not the worst injury she’d had on the job, or the most undignified situation she’d been in. The worst injury had been a rifle round through the neck, deep in the heart of Xhorhas. It had, like always, blown the operation wide open, and resulted in an extraction operation that Dairon had headed. Beau still remembered waking up in the hospital a month later, and croaking, “I knew you cared about me,” to the Elven woman.

 

As for the most undignified, well...there were a lot of ways that she could have answered that question. Some of which involved violence, and the war, and the Cobalt Soul, and a lot more of which involved back alleyways, and dive bar bathrooms, and by-the-hour motels.

 

‘We have a healer coming in,’ the goblin continued, as though Beau hadn’t just chucked her guts up in front of her. ‘A cleric that we trust.’

 

‘Cool,’ Beau murmured. ‘I need to get a message to HQ,’ she said. It seemed like it was something important. Something she should tell them, about the tiefling – about Mollymauk – and about the Iron Shepherds. But maybe that could wait until she wasn’t hearing colors.

 

‘Cleric first, talk to HQ after,’ the goblin told her. ‘I don’t want any more field operatives dying on that couch.’

 

Beau vaguely wondered just how many field operatives _had_ died on the couch. How hard was it to get the bloodstains out? She wanted to know, because she was pretty sure she was still bleeding pretty heavily. She pulled up her shirt, and was surprised to see that the bleeding had slowed a little.

 

‘Yasha gave you a little bit of healing.’ Beau stared at the goblin. That was the second time she’d used the name “Yasha,” as though Beau had any clue who that actually was.

 

‘Yasha’s my partner,’ the goblin said, helpfully, at the apparently blank look on Beau’s face. ‘She’s an aasimar.’

 

Beau was impressed. At least, that was the feeling she thought was running through her body. It was hard to tell, what with the poison still pulsing its way through her. She’d never met an aasimar, but apparently their healing didn’t do much for poison.

 

‘Oh, cool,’ were the utterly suave words that came out of Beau’s mouth. ‘What’s your name?’

 

‘Veth,’ said the goblin. ‘But most people call me Nott.’ Nott didn’t elaborate on the source of the nickname, and Beau didn’t ask. There were too many secrets in this business to call people out on them.

 

‘Great,’ Beau said. ‘Great. My name’s—’ She stopped. She had been about to say Beauregard, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to use that name in the field. If anyone asked, she told them her name was, ‘Traci.’

 

Nott’s yellow eyes narrowed, and Beau knew that she didn’t believe a single word that had come out of Beau’s mouth. Not that it mattered. Nott would know the tight line that field operatives had to walk.

 

There was a slight knocking sound, and the most beautiful woman Beau had ever seen walked into the room. She was tall – comically so, compared to the goblin – and had alabaster pale skin. She was carrying a plate of what Beau thought might have been rice and fish.

 

It looked bland as all hell, which Beau supposed was better for recovering from a poisoned blade. Still, she grimaced slightly as she swallowed it, and felt no satisfaction as it hit her empty stomach. The sooner that cleric got here, the better.

 

‘So you’re Biggs, huh?’ Beau asked, staring up at the aasimar. She had to be at least a foot taller than Beau, if not more.

 

Yasha frowned. ‘No, I’m Smalls,’ she said. ‘Which I am told is the joke. I’m not sure what is funny about it, but…’ She shrugged.

 

‘You’re from Xhorhas,’ Beau said. She hadn’t meant for it to sound so much like an accusation. The accent was pretty distinctive.

 

‘I am,’ said Yasha, seemingly unperturbed by the sudden change in conversation. Embarrassed, Beau realized that she was probably used to it. Cobalt operative, living in Rexxentrum, with a Xhorhasian accent. Not exactly common.

 

‘Oh,’ Beau said. She wasn’t sure what else to say. ‘Cool. Sorry if I sounded like a jerk.’

 

‘That’s okay,’ Yasha said. Her voice wasn’t as world-weary as Beau would have expected. She seemed to just...take things as they came. It was a good attitude to have in this business. The moment you started letting things get you down was the moment you started to burn out. ‘So have you, uh...been doing this long.’ She made a vague sort of gesture, referring, Beau assumed to the “bleeding out on the couch” business.

 

‘Three or four years,’ Beau told her. ‘They got me right outta high school.’ She winced. That was probably too much information to be telling someone, even if they were a station operative. The less they knew about her, the safer they’d be once she left.

 

‘Out of high school?’ Nott said, incredulously. ‘How _old_ are you?’ Beau didn’t answer. She’d definitely already said too much. Thankfully, she was spared having to answer by a knock on the door.

 

‘Oooh,’ Nott said. ‘The cleric’s here – now, we’ve used her before, but just be warned, she’s a little—’

 

The door opened. Nott paled a little bit, as she seemed to realize that she’d forgotten to lock it.

 

‘Hey guys!’ A bright blue tiefling wearing a petticoat dress entered the apartment. Her hair was in pigtails, and she was carrying a bag shaped like an enormous lollipop in one hand, with a box of pastries in the other. ‘Did you miss me?’ The accent was strange, and Beau couldn’t quite place it. Possibly from somewhere on the Menagerie Coast. There was that melting pot all over again.

 

‘Hi, Jester,’ Yasha said. She didn’t move away as the tiefling wrapped her in a tight hug. Nott, on the other hand, ran up to greet the tiefling – Jester. ‘Come and see the patient.’

 

Jester set down her bag, and the box, and came over to look at Beau.

 

‘Oh man, this doesn’t look good,’ Jester said. She was munching down on a croissant, even as she examined Beau’s wound. Beau shot Nott a look, that said, _Where the hell did you get this one?_ ‘You’re like...super poisoned.’

 

‘Thanks, Captain Obvious,’ Beau muttered. The world seemed a little bit farther away than it was supposed to.

 

‘You get snarky when you’re hurt,’ the cleric said, and before Beau could argue, Jester had laid her hands down on Beau’s stomach, and pumped a good dose of healing magic into her. The pain subsided a little bit, but not nearly as much as it did when Jester cast a Restoration spell.

 

‘Oh, holy shit,’ Beau said. The pain had subsided to a mere trickle, and the poison that had been creeping its way through her body seemed to have vanished entirely. ‘That’s way better. Thanks.’ She felt kind of bad about what she had to do next. ‘Now get out, so I can call in.’

 

They shuffled out of the room, and the only one that seemed put out by it was Nott. Jester, Beau wasn’t even sure was a Cobalt operative. Most Cobalt operatives she knew didn’t dress...like that.

 

Beau reached for her bag, and found the Comms unit. Thankfully it had survived all the bullshit she’d put it through. She unlocked it with her voice, and her retina, and her fingerprint, which was definitely a lot more security than most twenty-four year olds’ smart phones had.

 

When she dialed, it was picked up almost straight away

 

‘ _Hey there, Traci_.’ All of a sudden, Beau relaxed. She wasn’t even sure why she did it, since the situation that she was in was possible the least relaxing she could have been in. But if Caduceus Clay was on the other end of the line, then it was physically impossible not to relax.

 

‘Hey Caddyshack,’ she said, warmly. ‘You know it’s still really weird for my therapist to be calling me while I’m on a soul-searching trip?’

 

‘ _You know I like to check in with my patients,_ ’ he said. His voice was so calm, she almost wanted to go back to sleep. ‘ _How are things going?_ ’

 

‘Could be better,’ Beau admitted. ‘I tried visiting Uncle Harry, but one of his buddies got a bit violent, and I decided that wasn’t a place I could be anymore.’

 

‘ _Good_ ,’ Caduceus said, really meaning “bad.” ‘ _That’s great, you’re really making steps with your boundary issues_.’ They had almost a whole bit that they’d put together over the years, with Beau visiting estranged family members in foreign cities, and Caduceus praising her for it. She didn’t imagine that she would be so eager to visit her own family, would rather go another round with Lorenzo and his poisoned glaive.

 

‘So I tracked down those cousins you told me about, and I’m sleeping on their couch while I think about what to do next.’

 

‘ _I may have some ideas about that_ ,’ Caduceus said. Beau had no doubt that Dairon was standing at his shoulder, trying to prompt him to say something a little more substantial. ‘ _You remember that nice young man with the red hair you met that one Harvest Fest?_ ’

 

‘...yeah.’ Beau didn’t like the way this was going.

 

‘ _Well, I heard he was in Rexxentrum and really wanted to see you_.’

 

_Fuck. Motherfucking fuck._

 

‘Oh, well I guess I’ll have to look him up. You think I should take him out to dinner?’

 

‘ _If he’ll let you. Your mother thinks he’s a little cagey_.’

 

‘Well, you know I like ‘em cagey.’ It wasn’t a lie. In about eighty percent of her post-mission briefings, she’d been told off for starting fights too quickly, and drawing attention to herself. She was sure half the spies in Rexxentrum knew about the brash, young Monk with anger issues. The fact that they were straight up saying that she should take the Scourger out if possible was a little worrying.

 

‘ _Actually, maybe you should bring him around for dinner_.’

 

Bring the Scourger in. Oh, that was much better. Much less likely to end in disaster. Beau rolled her eyes.

 

‘Okay, well I’ll see if he’s interested, and I’ll call you back to arrange a time.’

 

‘ _Sounds like a great idea_.’

 

Beau said her goodbyes, and signed off. Motherfucker.

 

She went, and lay down in the spare room, but didn’t sleep. There was too much to do for her to sleep. Every moment she did nothing, the Scourger would come closer and closer to finding her, and taking her out, the same way he did the other three Cobalt agents.

 

They would have to act quickly, and by “they,” Beau really meant “she.” There was no way in fuck she was getting station operatives involved in this. They were used to keeping their ears to the ground. They weren’t used to getting shot at.

 

After a while, she got up, and returned to the living room. She would have a quick something to eat, and then get on her way. They didn’t need to help her any more than they already had.

 

At least, that was the plan. The plan that immediately went to shit when the door burst open, and a red-haired, bearded figure was standing there (why the fuck hadn’t the _Alarm_ gone off?) with flaming hands.

 

The world blew apart around Beau. She saw Yasha, and Nott, and Jester all fly backwards, felt her body hit the exterior wall of the apartment, smelt the sulfur of used spell components.

 

She tried to get up, but couldn’t. Her body did not respond to any of the commands she sent it. Her wrist, at least, was broken, and she suspected that one of her legs might have been as well.

 

The Scourger started walking towards her. He faltered, as a crossbow bolt suddenly appeared in his shoulder. Dazed, Beau turned and saw Nott crouching in the doorway, holding the smallest weapon she had ever seen.

 

Still, it had been enough to make the Scourger pay attention. If he wasn’t, he certainly paid attention when Yasha showed up with an enormous fucking sword. Beau wasn’t sure where she’d been hiding it. She sliced at the wizard, who didn’t even bother to dodge.

 

Beau jumped to her feet, seething in pain, as she antagonized the fresh burns, and the broken bones. Her staff – where the fuck was her staff….Oh, that’s right. She didn’t carry the staff while pretending to be a pothead on walkabout. Which was stupid, really, because if there was anyone in the world that carried a staff, it was a pothead on walkabout.

 

She closed the distance to the wizard, getting there just as he send another ball of fire in her direction. This one hit her head on, but she was so pumped up with adrenaline that she didn’t even feel it.

 

With a single, swift moment, she punched him in the face.

 

He dropped like a sack of lead bricks.

 

…

‘Thanks, Jester,’ Beau said, wincing as the cleric healed her for the second time that day. The burns healed over a little, and the bones knitted themselves back together, for the most part. Jester didn’t have the magic to do a full heal, given that, in addition to Beau, there was herself, Yasha, and Nott. Beau seemed to have taken the brunt of it, though, from the way she’d crashed into a brick wall.

 

Still, not the worst mission she’d ever been on.

 

Before she’d even let Jester come near her, she called it in – that the Scourger had rocked up on their doorstep trying to kill her – and waited for the response, with pickup details.

 

The wizard – the fucking _Scourger –_ was tied to a chair in the living room. He looked more than a little beaten up, from the crossbow bolt, and the sword wound, and the punch to the face. Still, his expression was blank, as though someone had gone in and cleared his mind of all conscious thought.

Beau clenched her fist.

Cobalt had given her training in both conducting and resisting enhanced interrogation. She could punch someone in the face once, and get them to spill their innermost secrets. The problem was, it only worked if they actually talked. Beau got the idea that the Scourger wasn’t one to loosen his lips without cause.

 

Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t try.

 

‘What’s your name?’ Beau asked. Best to start simple. The Scourger grinned. Blood filled his mouth from where Beau had punched him, twice now.

 

‘My name is Bren,’ he said. It was a cold, calculating sort of voice, and Beau thought she detected a Zemnian accent. It worried her that he so easily answered her question, that he did not try to resist, or simply just refuse to talk before she’d even put the pain to him.

 

‘Do you work for the Soltryce Academy?’

 

He laughed. ‘Yes.’

 

Beau stepped back, frowning. ‘What’s the problem?’ Nott asked. She eyed the wizard carefully. ‘He’s answering your questions, isn’t he?’

 

‘What spy have you ever met that cracks in interrogation in less than a minute?’

 

‘Well,’ Nott said, reasonably. ‘We’re station operatives. We don’t really see a lot of interrogations.’

 

‘It means he doesn’t give a shit if we know the answers or not.’ Meaning the Soltryce Academy didn’t care if the Cobalt knew the Scourger was taking out its operatives. Which was really fucking bad.

 

‘Right again, Beauregard,’ he said, smiling. It was an unsettling smile that Beau fixated on. How the fuck did he know her name? Too late, she notice that he had dislodged a capsule in his mouth. Only when the foam started to bubble at his lips did realize her mistake. If only she had some fucking magic.

 

‘Jester, get the fuck in here!’ Beau yelled. The tiefling crashed through the door where she had been not so subtly listening in. That was something that could be dealt with later. ‘He’s poisoned himself.’

 

With the speed of someone that had been in the espionage business a lot longer than this random civilian, Jester cast _Lesser Restoration_ on the wizard. For a moment, Beau thought that it hadn’t worked. Then, the convulsing stopped, and the foam began to subside. He was unconscious, Beau thought, as she leaned in to check his breathing. Not dead.

 

‘I might give him a _Greater Restoration_ , too,’ the cleric said. ‘Just to make sure.’ Before Beau could argue, the tiefling had pulled a handful of diamond dust from her pocket, and cast the spell. Nothing seemed to happen, except that the unconscious wizard gave a sharp intake of breath.

 

Beau sighed. She clapped the tiefling on the back. ‘Thanks, Jes.’

 

‘No problem.’ Jester beamed. ‘Is there anything else that you guys need?’

 

 _A fucking nap_ , Beau wanted to say.

 

‘Maybe stick around in case he decides to do it again,’ Beau told her. She was pretty sure that Jester was tapped out, but the cleric didn’t bring it up. She wanted to stick around, Beau knew, and there was no point in keeping her here if she didn’t have any spells left.

 

‘I’ll help Yasha in the kitchen,’ Jester said, brightly. Beau wished that her happiness was infectious, but the week’s events were starting to take their toll. She charged Nott with keeping an eye on their prisoner, and went to take a nap in the spare bedroom. The goblin took a quick swig from a flash (Beau pretended not to see that) and leveled her crossbow at the Scourger.

 

She was woken up two hours later by Yasha, who offered her a plate of the most delicious smelling meal that Beau had seen in a long time.

 

‘What’s in it?’

 

‘Rat,’ Yasha said, and sounded a little guilty. ‘It’s not the good rat that you get in Xhorhas, but Rexxentrum rat isn’t too bad, as long as you cook it right.’

 

‘Uh...’ Beau said, and decided that she was hungry enough to eat it anyway. It wasn’t bad, all things considered. She’d tried rat a few times before in Xhorhas, and it hadn’t really agreed with her, but Yasha seemed to make it with her Zadashian sensibilities in mind, meaning it wasn’t spiced to hell and back. ‘Thanks.’

 

Beau checked the Comms unit. The last message – _We’ll let you know what time dinner is_ – still flashed on the screen. Which meant that in the Operations room, Dairon and her team were still planning an extraction. It wasn’t unheard of. Once, during a tricky situation on Urukaxl, Beau had waited almost twelve hours in the jungle, hiding from Yuan-Ti, while she waited to get pulled out. It was just one of those Cobalt Soul mottos: “Hurry up and wait.”

 

She went into the living room, and watched the Scourger. He was conscious again, and unnervingly quiet. His cold eyes looked a little more worn, a little more...something, as he stared dead ahead. He seemed to be murmuring something under his breath. Not a spell. It couldn’t have been. They had taken all of his spell components.

 

Or at least Beau thought that they had. She moved to the back of the chair, and checked his wrists. Somehow, he had worked his wrappings free. Beneath the wraps were dozens of cuts, from one of which he had pulled a small iron rod, dripping with blood.

 

‘Nott!’ Beau yelled. She made to call for Yasha and Jester, but found that she couldn’t move. It was as though her entire body had seized up. She fell to the floor, paralyzed.

 

 _Fuckfuckfuckfuck_.

 

Not even being paralyzed could stop her from being able to hear what happened next, even though she couldn’t see it. Yasha and Nott and Jester rushed into the room, and were summarily paralyzed in turn.

 

At least it hadn’t been another _Fireball_.

 

Then, the Scourger broke free from his bindings as though they were made of nothing more than tissue. He found his coat, and his pouch of spell components, and walked out, as though going to the convenience store to pick up some bread and milk.

 

Pretty fucking embarrassing.

 

Beau tried to move her legs. When that failed, she tried to move her arms. When that failed, she tried to even just move her eyes. With an enormous effort, she broke free from the paralysis, and jumped to her feet, wincing at the pain that shot up her right leg.

 

Beau ran.

 

She ran out the door, and down the stairs into the street. She followed the sound of a semi-distant commotion, and it did not take her long to catch up to the Scourger, who, to her surprise, was running just as fast as she was.

 

‘Bren!’ she yelled after him. He stopped.

 

 _What the fuck_.

 

Then, his hand went into his pocket. Beau had no time to do anything. She was too far away to punch him, to kick him, to tackle him. She could only watch as he pulled out a chunk of reddish brown rock from his pocket. She got ready to dive out of the way, but found she didn’t have to.

 

An enormous _Wall of Fire_ burst up between them, far enough away that it didn’t burn, but close enough she could feel the heat.

 

Beau saw Bren’s eyes boring into her own. For half a second, Beau considered leaping across the flames, and going after him. Then, she remembered Yasha, and Nott, and Jester, all in need of her help. She remembered the still healing glaive wound across her chest, and the burns from the first _Fireball_ that the Scourger had cast, and the wrist that was still throbbing with pain. She remembered that she was in an Empire City, filled with civilians that could all get in the way of an errant _Fireball_. Even now, they looked on in awe at the scene. Not very discreet.

 

She would have to wait.

 

‘We’ll get you,’ she said, her voice soft enough that she knew he probably wouldn’t hear.

 

Somehow, though, he did. Strangely, he nodded to her, in a manner that was almost respectful. As though he knew that it wasn’t over between them.

 

‘Until we meet again, Beauregard.’

 

…

 

 

Eyes closed, Beau rested her head against the wall. She didn’t particularly want to do this.

 

After all, it wasn’t every day that an agent somehow messed up two simultaneous missions in the same city. Not only had she failed to get the intel needed on the Iron Shepherds, she had failed to catch The Scourger. Not exactly a feather in her cap.

 

In the Ops room, they would now doubt be gossiping about how badly she had fucked up.

 

‘How you doing?’ a voice said. Beau looked over, and saw the half-orc that had sat down beside her. Fjord. She hadn’t realized he was back from Rosohna already.

 

‘Fucking peachy,’ Beau muttered, which was a complete lie. Though Jester had healed her, she still woke in the night with her chest aching from the glaive. That might have had something to do with the nightmares.

 

‘You did as well as you could have, given the circumstances,’ Fjord said, evenly, which confirmed Beau’s suspicions that the story had already spread.

 

‘Doesn’t feel that way,’ Beau said. Then, she decided to change the subject. ‘How was Rosohna?’

 

Fjord laughed. ‘Dark,’ he said. ‘Glad to be back in the sunshine.’

 

‘Mmm,’ Beau smiled. Every time she went to Rosohna, the best part was always when she got back. She could draw the curtains wide in her shitty apartment in the shittiest neighborhood in Zadash, and let the sun in.

 

‘Drinks tonight if you’re interested,’ Fjord told her. ‘Caddyshack said he’d come.’

 

As much as the idea of watching a seven-foot tall Firbolg down shots appealed to Beau, she was still a wreck. After she’d finished with Dairon – which went as well as could have been expected – she went home, and laid herself out on the bed.

 

There was a stack of mail, and an even bigger stack of dirty dishes waiting for her. The dishes, she would probably just throw away and get new ones, because she was pretty sure whatever was growing on them wasn’t safe for human consumption.

 

The mail, though, she would probably have to deal with. Bill (ugh), letter from her parents (UGH), catalog for the MMA store she liked to frequent (set aside to peruse later), and lastly, a plain white envelope, her name and address hand-written in neat cursive.

 

Beau frowned.

 

No-one should have this address. It was one of those stupid Cobalt Soul rules about fraternization, and not letting anyone know any information that they didn’t need to know. If someone had this address, it was a pretty big security risk.

 

She should leave the letter sealed, and take it in.

 

 _It wouldn’t hurt to open it,_ she thought. _They’d still be able to get everything they needed to from the envelope._

 

In the end, curiosity, as it always did, won over. Beau checked the envelope over, just in case it was trapped, before opening it carefully.

 

A single piece of lined paper fell out. It had been folded very precisely into thirds, and had only three lines of text written on it.

 

The first was her name.

 

 _Beauregard_ , it read.

 

_Thank-you for setting me free._

 

 _Bren Aldric Ermendrud, formerly of the Soltryce Academy_.

 

Beau stared at the paper. Then, she stared a little more. Finally, she managed to find her voice.

 

‘Well, fuck.’

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a dystopian AU, but ended up as just a modern day spies/assassins one-shot. May do a follow-up from Caleb/Bren's perspective.
> 
> And yeah, technically Jester is the one that cleared the modify memory (not that Beau knows that), but Bren/Caleb is very much aware that Beau was driving the situation.


End file.
